The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance.

The subsidies have been colossal and the impacts on the electricity market chaotic.

Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. Power starved Germans, instead of freezing, grabbed their axes and tramped into their forests to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).

German manufacturers – and other energy intensive industries – faced with escalating power bills are packing up and heading to the USA – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and here and here). And the “green” dream of creating thousands of jobs in the wind industry has turned out to be just that: a dream (see our post here).

Those in charge of Germany’s power grid have stepped up calls for an end to the lunacy of trying to absorb a wholly weather dependent generation source into what was never designed to deal with the chaos presented on a daily basis:

The economics are so bizarre, that you’d think its “Energiewende” policy had been put together by the GDR’s ‘brains trust’, before the Berlin Wall took its tumble in 1989.

In Germany, around €100 billion has already been burnt on renewable subsidies; currently the green energy levy costs €56 million every day. And, the level of subsidy for wind and solar sees Germans paying €20 billion a year for power that gets sold on the power exchange for around €2 billion.

Squandering €18 billion a year on power – which Germans have in abundance from meaningful sources – has them asking the fair and reasonable question: just how much power are they getting for the €billions that they’ve thrown – and continue to throw at wind and solar? The answer – at a piddling 3.3% – is: NOT MUCH.

For Germans, that would all be miserable enough, except that – contrary to the purported environmental purpose of their Energiewende – CO2 emissions are rising, not falling as promised and predicted.

If “saving” the planet is – as we are repeatedly told – all about reducing man-made emissions of an odourless, colourless, naturally occurring trace gas, essential for all life on earth – then German energy/environmental policy has manifestly failed. And what an expensive failure it is.

Mike Shellenberger, President of Environmental Progress and Time Magazine ‘Hero of the Environment’, appeared dismayed when he tweeted here that Germany CO2 emissions rose over 1% in 2015, as the following chart shows:

In 2015 Germany’s CO2 emissions rose to 912 million tonnes, up from 902 million tonnes from a year earlier and from 906 million tonnes way back in 2009. Overall Germany’s CO2 emissions savings have trended slightly upwards over the past 7 years.

Megan Darby at Climate Home here calls the development “a blow to the country’s claims to climate leadership”.

Schellenberger has every reason to be shocked by the 2015 result.

2015 was Germany’s second warmest year on record, meaning fuel consumed for heating had to have been low.

Germany has invested tens of billions of euros in its bid to switch to CO2-free energy sources. Angela Merkel top aide Peter Altmaier warned that the Energiewende would cost 1 trillion euros.

Consumers, who were once into thinking it wasn’t going to cost much, are now paying close to the highest electricity prices worldwide. One kilowatt-hour costing close to €30 cents. Hundreds of thousands of households are having their power cut off because they can no longer afford to pay their power bills.

Germany power grid is now more unstable than it has been in decades. That fact in combination with the high electricity prices is driving industry out.

Germany’s per capita CO2 emissions are among the highest in the world.

About half of Germany’s CO2 reductions since 1990 resulted from the shut-down of former communist East Germany’s inefficient state-run industry.

Wind parks have blighted much of the country’s idyllic landscape and thousands of people are now suffering from health damage due to infrasound. Planned windparks are facing increasingly ferocious protests from nature protection and citizens groups.

2016 will likely also see no reductions – thanks to the low petroleum prices and colder weather so far.

Socialism and energy!

In summary Germany’s Energiewende has been an extremely costly government-intervention debacle of monumental dimensions.

We haven’t seen such a large-scale industrial mismanagement since the collapse of the USSR and the German Democratic Republic.

Recall that not only did their industry collapse into a heap of rubble, but they too also left huge environmental damage that we are still cleaning up 25 years later.

And no one in his/her right mind expects Germany to meet its 2020 target, let alone 2030. Other countries have to be insane (or have lots of money to burn) to follow the German example.NoTricksZone

Reblogged this on Patti Kellar and commented:
So the next time someone runs the line by you, well Europe doesn’t have any problems, please send them this link. Wind Power – definition of Insanity. Increases emissions and costs a fortune – in addition to making people sick. Isn’t that reason enough to stay STOP THIS CRAZINESS!!!!

Wind was never a goer. It is minuscule compared to the 3Cubic Miles of oil equivalent energy consumed annually world wide. For just one cubic mile, taking Hydro as an example, there would need to be 200 dams each as massive as China’s 3 Gorges Dam.
It’s easy to see this is impossible. We will rise and fall on oil and/or gas and that future is a short one.

Power is generated with coal, rather than oil (in the main), with gas increasing in its share of power generation, particularly in the US, where its ability to tap unconventional reserves has seen gas prices plummet.

Hydro is a system available on demand and will be around long after oil is gone.

Nuclear power is something you overlook. 436 reactors are humming along right now, with a fuel source that will be available for millennia to come.

Very good,Canadians need to unite and flood the Federal and Provincial governments with letters and emails to stop this lunatic idea of using wind power. I have written our Premier of Alberta to stop the building of wind turbines in Alberta and plan to write Prime Minister Justin (Idiot) Trudeau about the lunatic plan to allow more wind farms in Canada. Who will join me and take the time to write letters (they tend to work better)and or send emails.

I’m in Scotland, the energy policy has already damaged our environment, huge wind turbines built in our wild areas, wind farms built too close to rural towns and villages. People suffering from ill health effects due to infra-sound, etc. Brown-outs, flickering lights, damage to electrical goods. Fuel poverty on a grand scale.

Any complaints inc. health complaints are swept away. Wind developers and politicians hand-in-hand, still full of propaganda, no end as yet in sight to this folly and scam.

I can only hope that not only will the scam collapse but those responsible for inflicting the damage, both health and environmental are brought to justice. They are destroying people’s lives. Wildlife and birds, sheer destruction.

In Huron County, Ontario, a German farmer who has not been in Canada very long and was and is still out of touch with reality in the country of his origin, was allowed to have many wind turbines on his properties, These turbines made his home uninhabitable, so he moved his family out and is now trying to rent his farmhouse which is surrounded with turbines. His turbines have negatively impacted the lives of his neighbours because they surround a once idyllic river valley neighbourhood, where nine families own millions of dollars worth of real estate and have been enjoying this beautiful setting…some for as long as 40 years.
How on earth is this acceptable?

That’s the question asked by No Tricks Zone in today’s STT piece on the parlous state of Germany’s Energiewende; their people suffering in thousands; emissions targets missed which is no wonder because of the filthy lignite mines which are being opened. However, we’ve done the Energiewende thing to death over recent months.

It’s the end sentence which interested us:

‘And no one in his/her right mind expects Germany to meet its 2020 target, let alone 2030. Other countries have to be insane (or have lots of money to burn) to follow the German example.’

A couple of stats:

Germany’s renewable electricity 2020 target = 27% (raised from 18)

Scotland’s renewable electricity 2020 target = 100%

We don’t believe that Scotland (or the whole UK seeing as all of the UK consumers pay for subsidies and constraint payments) has money to burn. The Westminster Government has, since June 18th last year, made that abundantly clear on so many occasions.

Answers on a postcard, please.

PS. We’ve used ‘Insanity’ and ‘Money to Burn’ pictures before. So we’ve combined both questions into a ‘pigs may fly’ photo which has a hint of troughers about it. The whole scam encapsulated in one.